Don’t laugh. I might have run into trouble with the cops recently. It’s nothing to be excited about, mind you, and as soon as my mean-ass editor helps me get all of this sorted with the authorities I’ll be in the clear.

Oh, get your minds out of the gutter.

It all started innocently enough. My doctor, a rather tall ginger with a mustache screaming “I own a snowblower,” informs me it’s time to check the ol’ plumbing. “You’re not getting any younger, Chris,” he said, handing me a prep kit apparently designed by sadists at a laxative convention. The instructions? Take three Dulcolax and wash them down with a gallon of what looks and tastes like Satan’s Gatorade and spend the next twelve hours regretting every life decision that led you to this moment while hugging your toilet like the porcelain throne it is.

Naturally, I complied, because I fear things like “nodules” and “pre-cancerous polyps.” By the time I was done the downstairs bathroom looked like a crime scene from Investigative Discovery and I swear I was down two pant sizes.

But let’s go to the day of the “procedure.” I’m at a place called [NAME REDACTED] groggy from hunger and wearing a gown flimsier than a promise from Marsha Blackburn. The nurse, bless her heart, is trying to calm me down, but I’m jittery. This was partially due to the impending scope up the Hershey Highway and partly because I’d snuck a pre-dawn latte from [NAME REDACTED].

Big mistake. Apparently “clear liquids only” doesn’t include espresso and my stomach was staging a protest louder than Vols fans got when Greg Schiano almost became head coach.

Enter Buford T Thundercunt (not his real name), a local sheriff’s deputy who apparently moonlights as security for the clinic since local budgets are tighter than that stupid gown’s drawstring. Buford’s the sort who thinks “de-escalation” is a fancy way of saying “yell louder.”
I’m lying on a gurney trying to explain to the nurse why my insides sound like a coffee grinder when Buford overhears and decides I’m now a “person of interest.”

I’d apparently said something about needing a “sip to survive” and Deputy Thundercunt took this as me sneaking contraband into the procedure.

“Son,” he asked me, “you been drinking something you shouldn’t? You know there’s rules here, right?” I attempted to explain it was coffee and not moonshine, but Buford’s already calling for backup like I’ve got a kilo of Escobar’s finest in my colon. The nurse, now caught between medical protocol and Buford’s ego, looks like she’d rather be anywhere else.

And then the fucking anesthesiologist chimed in. “If he’s got coffee in his system, we can’t sedate him properly,” he says, glaring at me like I just insulted his mother. Anyway, Buford takes this as evidence of a conspiracy. “You trying to sabotage this procedure, boy?” Before I know it I’m being read my rights while hooked to an IV.

Talk about a new personal low.

Now I’m not innocent here. I broke the sacred colonoscopy code and I own that. But Buford’s acting like I orchestrated a bank heist! This motherfucker’s muttering about “endangering public health” and “disorderly conduct” which is rich since his lunch is a gas station hot dog. The clinic staff, sensing an impending PR disaster, convince Buford to step down, but not before he confiscated the Stanley I swiped from my wife last December as evidence.

Yes, my Stanley with the name of a veterinary medicine company on it. I’m pretty sure it’s sitting in a Knox County evidence locker now.

The colonoscopy itself was anticlimactic, thank you. They knocked me out, probed my naughty bits, and sent me home with a clean bill of health and a pamphlet on “following directions.” If that wasn’t enough, I got a $50 citation for “improper use of a beverage container” from Deputy Thundercunt and a lecture on civic responsibility.

Anyway the moral of the story? Follow the damn prep instructions, folks. And keep your coffee mugs out of the doctor’s office, because weekend warriors like ol’ Buford have it out for my blessed caffeine. Have a great weekend and here’s hoping your next medical adventure doesn’t end with a rap sheet.